All along the road he met with fresh rumours and alarms. The rebellion was spreading; the whole of British Kaffraria and the Transkei was over-ran; nearly all the settlers’ houses in the more exposed districts were burnt down; the Police express-riders carried their lives in their hands, as they darted across the hostile country, several of them having been cut off already. Added to which these districts were in a dire state of alarm, by reason of impending troubles nearer home, for the Gaika clans in the Waterkloof and Blinkwater fastnesses, under the chiefs Tini Macomo and Oba, were in a state of restlessness, and meanwhile signal fires burnt nightly on the higher peaks of the Amatola.
It was, indeed, a motley crew, was this “levy” of which the two Englishmen were in command, numbering between sixty and seventy men. Yellow-skinned Hottentots; dark Korannas; tall, light-coloured Bastards; every shade and kindred of the race which though inferior to them in many respects, yet looked upon themselves as the natural foes of the Kafirs, and with far more sympathies of rule, of civilisation, or rather semi-civilisation, and even of blood, with the white man, for few indeed but had some drops of white blood in them. Even two or three specimens of the ape-like Bushmen found part in the motley gathering—wiry, active little rascals, with skulls hard as iron and the agility of cats—and one and all by virtue of their white strain, and the weapons wherewith they had been supplied; and confidence in their leaders, felt themselves immeasurably superior in prowess to the naked tribesmen against whom they were burning to be led. Not a few of the older men—wrinkled, shrivelled-looking, sinewy creatures, but game to the backbone—had been rebels in the war of ’50, when the old Cape Mounted Rifles, then composed of such fellows as these, had gone over in a body to the enemy, and, bearing in mind the salutary lesson they had been taught, both by their ill-chosen friends and their deserted employers, were now only too ready to retrieve the past, and to avenge themselves upon the treacherous savages who had then misled them. They were mostly plucky; fair shots and reliable at a pinch; but, as yet, in a state of indifferent discipline; and it required all their leader’s promptitude and firmness to lick them into anything like decent shape. His first address to them was short and to the point.
“Now, men,” he said, in the ordinary Boer Dutch, which was their mother tongue. “We are going out to fight—to fight in real earnest, and not to play. I have seen fellows I would far less sooner command than I would you, for I know you can hold your own against any number of these rascally Gaikas. Many of you are good shots, I know, and we’ll soon have plenty of opportunity of peppering Jack Kafir handsomely, I promise you. Remember, we are going to fight—and to fight we must always be in a state of readiness and of order, because we are in the enemy’s country and never know when we may have him down upon us. Now, mark my words. Any man who gets drunk, or is found asleep at his post, shall have six dozen well laid on with a couple of new reims, as sure as my name’s Claverton, and the second time he’ll be shot. Mind, I’ll stand no hanky-panky. When we get home again you can get on the spree as much as you like; in camp, steadiness is the order of the day. Your rations you’ll get just as I get mine, neither better nor worse. I shall ask no man to go where I won’t lead him, and now we’ll just go and thrash Jack Kafir into a cocked hat—yourselves and Mr Lumley and I. So we understand each other. I am commanding men, not fools or children—isn’t it so?”
“Ja, kaptyn—ja!” they cried, cheering him vociferously. “We shall show you we are all men—good men and true.”
“That’s right. Now I am going to let you elect your own sergeants and corporals, and, having elected them, by Jove, you’ll have to obey them. I should recommend, for choice, Gert Spielman, Cobus Windvogel, Dirk Hesler,” and he ran through a list of about a dozen of the most trustworthy veterans, knowing full well that those who were elected would be devoted to him, and those who were not, scarcely less so for his having recommended them. And thus having got his corps into working order, and, in fact, it became more manageable every day, Claverton and his lieutenant journeyed with light hearts towards the seat of war.
“These fellows will turn out a very creditable lot, or I’m much mistaken,” remarked Lumley, as they were advancing through one of the defiles of the Amatola. “They are cool and reliable at a pinch, and not susceptible to panic like the Fingoes. I’d rather have fifty of them than five hundred Fingoes.”
“I quite believe it,” assented Claverton. “Some of them are tough customers, and once beyond the reach of grog they’re all right.”
“Yes. Look at that old Gert Spielman, for instance,” pointing to a shrivelled, little old Hottentot, with a skin like parchment. “He’s a dead shot. The infernal old scoundrel was a rebel last war, and only escaped hanging by the skin of his teeth. I suspect he’s drawn a bead with effect many a time on poor Tommy Atkins in those days. Well, now—if occasion offers—you’ll see he’ll turn out to be one of our best men.”
“No doubt. But I say; this is a queer place, and the sooner we get through it the better.”
They were threading a long, narrow defile. Overhead the forest-covered slopes rose to the sky, and down to the path stretched the jungly bush—dense, tangled, and apparently impenetrable. Great yellow-wood trees here and there reared their grey, massive limbs, from which the lichens dangled, above the lower scrub, and monkeys chattered, and birds flitted screaming from the road as the troop moved forward. Some fifteen or twenty of the men had horses of their own, and these, Claverton, like a prudent commander, had thrown forward as scouts, if not to clear the way at any rate to give warning of any assemblage of the foe threatening to oppose their progress—which they could easily do, being as quick of eye and as agile of limb as the Kafirs themselves. But no sign of obstruction was encountered, and soon, emerging from the gorge, they found themselves in more open country, bushy still, but not densely so—indeed, such that in the event of attack the advantage would not be wholly on the enemy’s side.